


lovely made from love

by Barkour



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: F/M, Future Fic, Pregnancy, Self-Indulgent, Unlikely Happy Ending, poop jokes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-06
Updated: 2019-02-06
Packaged: 2019-10-23 10:27:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17681696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Barkour/pseuds/Barkour
Summary: So, like, it's the future, and they're married, and they're having a kid. That's the fic.





	lovely made from love

**Author's Note:**

> For widojest discord. Y'all wild. Title from "Isn't She Lovely" by Stevie Wonder.

“I changed my mind,” Jester announced, “the worst part is the pooping,” and then she went miserably to the garderobe for the fourth time that morning. 

Caleb followed, rather like a guilty dog after its owner. He lingered at the door as Jester popped up her shift and plopped onto the privy with hard-won expertise. Her belly jutted. She was scowling.

“Ah, is there anything that I could get you?”

“Yes, _please_ , I want roses and lilacs and jasmine flowers, and I want to smell them right now so I don’t have to smell this room anymore, _augh!_ ” She shouted this at the wall and the narrow window in it. “I am so tired of pooping! Why is this baby so full of shit!”

Caleb called, “The baby is not the one pooping.” He’d gone back into their room to hunt up one of the ginger-scented candles Jester sometimes used for prayers or odd rituals. 

“Are you having the baby? Is the baby inside of _your_ belly? No! _Because you put the baby in me_.” 

He lit the candle and put the match out between two fingers. In the garderobe, Jester had bent over as far as she could in evident exhaustion. Her hair, dark blue and gleaming and very badly tangled from another restless, kicking night, stuck out on her half-bared shoulders. She was resting her head on her breasts, on her belly.

“Next time,” she grumbled to Caleb as he rubbed some wax free to stick the candle upright to the stone floor, “I’m going to pray r-e-a-l-l-y hard and maybe the Traveler will put the baby in you and you can poop all day while I take care of you.”

“You would do a very good job of taking care of me,” Caleb said. “Lift your head for me now, please.”

Jester did. She stuck her chin out too. Caleb knelt and wiped some of the warm wax under each nostril, and Jester made a rude face but let him dab her chin too.

“There. That should help with your stomach.”

She sighed and rested her head on his shoulder. They both listened in a sort of weary, wry silence as she passed a knot of gas. Caleb rubbed between her shoulders. She leaned more heavily against him. His other hand gripped her wrist, then more gently her elbow, and then at last very lightly he touched the tips of those fingers to her belly.

Somewhere under the fat and the muscle, the baby stretched. He felt the movement finely. Jester, however, farted again.

“Sorry,” she said. “They’re going to sleep.”

“You can tell this?”

“Oh, yes,” Jester whispered, “they like to find my bladder and go to sleep right on top of that like it’s a pillow. And if they’re awake then they’re punching and kicking everything. Is Beau the father, maybe?”

“I promise I will forgive you both,” said Caleb dryly. 

He went on rubbing Jester, front and back. Her night-shirt rumpled under his hand. Looking at the flower embroidered fabric between his rough fingers, he thought about pulling the shirt up and flushed.

“Are you thinking something dirty?” Jester’s lips were in his hair.

“No.”

“Maybe later, okay?” Another sigh, the loudest of all, and plaintive too as Jester shifted on the privy. “My legs are falling asleep. I’m going to wipe so you have to go away.”

Caleb snorted in his nose. What a thing, he thought, to be here in this moment after so very many long years of madness and fire and hatred and then journeying, endlessly. Thirty-nine years old and holding up his wife as she complained about shitting. The little voice in him said of course he did not deserve such luxuries as this; but the rest of him shut it up because Jester did need his help to stand up from the toilet and not pitch forward onto her face.

“Don’t you dare look at my butt,” Jester said, managing somehow to hiss it. 

“I promise that I will never look at your butt.”

“Thank you.”

“It is a very handsome butt.”

“You can look at it sometimes.”

She clutched his hand tightly for balance as she cleaned herself. Her complexion under her freckles had gone that paler blue she turned instead of a blush. The candle flickered at the light touch of a breeze come through the window. Ginger and the smell of it surrounded them. 

Caleb leaned his head close to hers so that he might put his lips to her hair. He said, “Maybe I could take you back to bed, Süsse,” with some nonchalance. 

“With your skinny arms?” 

She only teased. A better diet and security had let Caleb slowly fill his frame again. He hadn’t been healthy since—well. He was hardly a man then. A surprise to discover he could look so much like his broad-shouldered, thick-chested father. There were times it was like seeing a ghost in his own face. He put the ghost away.

Caleb hummed as if in thought and offered one of those skinny arms to her. Jester clutched him and shook her shift out. The hem brushed at her thighs. They walked slowly, arm in arm, back to the bed. 

“Do you think anyone else is up yet?” 

They were for the time being staying at a little inn west of Nicondaras, en route – slowly en route – to visit Marion. Pressed, he would admit he didn't think travel was the best idea; but then Jester had only started to slow down the week before. Caleb suspected nothing short of divine intervention could stop Jester once she'd got going. And Jester accumulated people wherever she went, and so Beau (waiting for Yasha’s return) had come along and Caduceus too though Caduceus of course had other reasons to visit Nicondaras. Her royal guard, Caleb joked. 

“Beau is probably awake,” he said. “It’s nearly eight. And you know what Clay is like.”

“He’s leaving flowers all over that little church graveyard,” said Jester happily. She made a controlled tumble to the bed, with Caleb’s hands near her all the way. “Good. So then we can’t wake anyone up.” She caught his hands and tugged.

Caleb, in his own unlaced night-shirt, went to her. The way she wanted it, he would have plastered on top of her. Mindful of the baby, he went instead to his side and drew her like that so that her back fitted to his chest. 

She smelled a mixture of things, some good smells, some bad smells, but healthy, yes, and all of them living smells. Tucking his nose to her nape he inhaled deeply.

“Your hair is a mess.”

“You can brush it for me later.”

Jester had that dimpling, sneaky smile in her voice. Taking his upper hand, she brought it to her breast and squeezed their hands together around it. Caleb kissed her neck, the soft skin behind her ear, then as he rose some over her, the lobe of her ear and her cheek.

“Do you know what the best thing is?”

“Mm?” 

She turned so his next kiss was half on her mouth. Their lips lingered. He marveled at all of it.

Whispering loudly Jester said, “The best thing is how I’m, like, super horny _all_ the time,” and Caleb didn’t mean to do it but he laughed into her mouth. His fingers pinched at her nipple in reproach, and Jester laughed too, a snickering snorting burst of it, even as he pushed easily into her and she sighed long and slow and sweet, so terribly sweet, welcoming Caleb as she reached back to stroke his jaw with a loose fanning of her fingers.

**Author's Note:**

> "Babies???" 
> 
> Yeah. Babies. _Come fight me._


End file.
